


Centuries of love and one Twitter hashtag

by Yokanne



Category: Hololive, Virtual Streamer Animated Characters
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:47:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29965209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yokanne/pseuds/Yokanne
Summary: Calli liked Kiara for centuries. So when the phoenix decided to create #Takamori as a game and a way to interact with their fans, Calli was both deeply happy that she will share one more thing with Kiara and incredibly sad that she has to be in a fake relationship with the one she loves.
Relationships: Mori Calliope/Takanashi Kiara
Comments: 8
Kudos: 117





	Centuries of love and one Twitter hashtag

**Author's Note:**

> I really like both Kiara and Calli and just want the two of them to be happy.

“Calli, Kikkerikiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!”

With an obvious joy in her voice, Kiara calls Calli as soon as she sees her. Kiara requested this meeting, saying she has something of the utmost importance to say to Calli, something that will change the world. Calli, even though she is busy as always, even more now that she began this new VTuber thing and is trying to learn the ropes, still makes some time for her. She is not sure if she wants to hear what the bird will say but if she has an unreasonable idea, it’s better to stop her as soon as possible.

“Hello Kiara, I’m also happy to see you.”  
“Ok so hear me out, I thought about something incredible, let’s become Takamori!”  
And here she goes again, with her nonsensical idea. Calli obviously doesn’t know every word in the dictionary, maybe more than the average person, as knowing more words is always useful when she writes songs, but she is quite sure she never ever heard the word Takamori.

“I think you will have to give me a longer explanation. Did you die in the future and come back to the present with some new vocabulary or is it one of your new creations?” As far as she knows, Kiara was just a phoenix, she could come back to life if she dies, and she saw it more times that she could count, but she was not capable of time travel. But she couldn’t exclude the possibility, maybe this bird was really capable of coming back from the future just because no one told her it was not possible.

“Nope, I am not able to time travel and trust me, I tried but all I got in return was some strange deaths.” Calli is waiting for her to continue, not even trying to find what Kiara would consider a strange death, as, for Calli, almost all her deaths were far away from normal stuff like sickness and old age. “If we take the Mori from your name and the Taka from mine and we combine both, we have Takamori. We have been friends for so long, this will be a fun way to interact with both of our fans.” “You mean, like a couple's name, like we are dating?” Calli asked with a strange tone in her voice, even though she tries, and thinks she succeeds, in saying those words in a neutral tone. “Well no, maybe we can let them believe our avatars are dating, we would have so many cute fanarts. But us? That would be stupid.”

\--------------------------------------

“I am the stupid one”. 

Calli answered to no one a question no one asked her. She is still not sure if she is regretting or is enjoying that she accepted Kiara’s idea. She is delighted that Kiara asked her. During a few seconds of her life, she was maybe the happiest she has ever been. It was almost like Kiara asked her out. Almost. 

She has known her for centuries, millennia even. She saw her each time she died. Kiara came back to the Underworld every time and each time she brought warmth to this absolutely desolate place. Sure, being a reaper means that you are not often seeing people alive and she was used to a world without light, a world without heat, a world with nothing but the souls of the dead. 

But each time Kiara died, it was different. At first, she didn’t like it, exactly because it was different. She couldn’t work as usual, this stupid bird always came to her all smiling, telling her of her stupid adventures. It was a pain in the ass. And then, came the jealousy. How could this animal live her life to the fullest when all she did, every day, without a break, was just to reap souls and tend to the Underworld. So, she lashes out at her. In a corner of her mind, she knew it was unreasonable and that Kiara was not responsible. She was also trapped in a life without death, just not in the same way. But she didn’t like how Kiara made her feel things, whatever those things were. It was just a hindrance to her work, an hindrance to her everyday life. But this stupid bird didn’t give up. She continued to come and talk to Calli, each time she died. Even when she rejected her, even when she ignored her, she still came back to Calli. And more than anything, Calli hated that when Kiara was alive, she was beginning to feel a void.

Calli didn’t know what to do with this new feeling. She had never really known any kind of emotion, except annoyance when some stupid souls tried to bargain for their life, and now she was feeling something she couldn’t really comprehend. So, she did the only thing she could, she studied humans just before their deaths to try to understand her feelings based on what all those humans felt when they die. And she concluded that when Kiara was not here, she was lonely. It was such an impossibility that she outright rejected it. Until she saw Kiara’s smile at her next death. 

And for the first time, she decided to listen to what Kiara told her. It was a pleasant feeling, hearing the bird talks about her past life. So, she kept on doing it. Death after death after death after death, she listened, and she began to answer. Hundreds of years after their first meeting, they were finally having a real conversation. It was still mostly Kiara talking and Calli listening and asking some questions, but it was still a real exchange, as real as it can be for a reaper whose main companions are the souls of the dead. After each conversation, Kiara’s smile grew wider and each time, she was even more enthusiastic. And Calli began to long for Kiara, for her smile, for her warmth, for her stories, for her laugh. When Kiara was alive, Calli was torn between the desire for her to die again as soon as possible so she could see her even one second sooner and the wish for her to live as much as possible because Kiara is never as happy as when she is living her life to the fullest. And before she even knew it, Calli was in love with Kiara. And to be closer to Kiara, to better understand her, Calli took what was maybe the foolish decision of her life, she decided to try living.

“Us dating? That would be stupid.” 

She still hears her answer in her head, almost every time she isn’t doing something. She thought she had a special connection to the stupid bird, so she doesn’t understand. Calli isn’t sure about her sexuality, except for the fact that she likes Kiara, but she is sure that Kiara likes women. By a strange stroke of luck, both happened to be VTuber so even if she maybe wasn’t sure of that before, when she told her of her past lives and lovers, she is absolutely sure now. The way Kiara is interacting with the female characters in the games she plays, the fact she dressed all the ladies in swimsuits in Atelier Ryza, how she wanted to date all the other female characters in Fire Emblem, it is impossible for Calli to think that Kiara is not attracted to women. And Calli is quite sure some of her colleagues are an item, like the doggo and the cat or the half-elf and the knight, so it shouldn’t be a problem related to their job.

Devastated by the rejection, Calli isn’t even sure why she continued to live and didn’t go back to the Underworld the same day. Maybe because she still has a strong sense of responsibility and don’t want to disappoint her fans. Maybe because she likes rapping and it is way more interesting to do it in the human world where people actually listen to you. Thus, she decided to put all her mind and body in exactly those two things.

So Calli buries her love.

But the worst part for Calli is Kiara pushing for Takamori in much of her streams and retweeting fanarts. And it was so so hard for Calli. She accepted that for Kiara, Takamori is just a fun game between the two of them and their fans, but it is still so painful. Kiara was her beacon of light in the Underworld, they were closer now than they have ever been, they are even considered a couple by many of their respective fans, and that’s exactly what makes it even more complicated. Calli is not a great flirt but still she still tried to court Kiara a few times, especially when Kiara was being very insistent with Takamori. To no avail. 

No matter, Calli is still happy to be near, to spend time with Kiara, even like that. She treasures the moments she is spending with Kiara, even as a friend. She feels jealous when Kiara talks so much about Pekora but she is still smiling for her because seeing Kiara happy makes her happy. She appreciates all the Takamori fan contents she sees, even if it stings a little to see the difference with the reality. 

So Calli continues to bury her love. 

And she does the exact opposite of what she wanted to do. She rejects Kiara. During streams, when some fans mention Takamori or how Kiara is talking about her, she feigns indifference. She acts like it doesn’t concern her, like it’s someone else's problem. She is doing her job like Kiara is just another one of her colleagues, no different from the shark, the detective or the priestess. She decided to always call her Kusotori as, from time to time, even calling her by her name was too difficult. Sure, it hurts treating her like that and she isn’t even sure if this indifference really helped her or is just adding another nail to the coffin of her heart, but it gives her a kind of protection. Being alive, being rejected by Kiara while she is so often talking about her, is more painful than she ever imagined and if she needs to lie to herself to keep being herself, then she will do it. But she can’t always maintain her facade and from time to time, during streams, she still can’t help it and says how much she appreciates Kiara or is angry when someone talks shit about Takamori. A small breather for her crushing feelings.

So Calli buries her love even deeper.

\--------------------------------------

“You mean, like we are dating?” 

Kiara replayed the question in her head. She immediately rejected the possibility because it seemed such a strange idea. She is not foreign to love. She lived so many times; she dated many women over the centuries. Some she still remembers fondly but most, she forgot everything about them except that she loved them. She is a phoenix, but she doesn’t have a perfect memory and events that happened centuries ago were now nothing more than a vague afterthought. 

She is happy with all of her lives, both because she lives them to their fullest, even the ones where she died a stupid death, like who could have guess than trying to take a lava bath during the eruption of Vesuvius would even kill a phoenix, and because she saw the smile on Calli’s face when she told her those stories after each death.

Calli was the one constant in Kiara’s life. She saw civilizations rise and crumble, she saw the transformation of technology, she saw wars, and took part in a number of them, she saw the beauty in human beings but more than anything she saw deaths. Her death is irrelevant, as it is not really a death, but she saw people she cared about dying, she saw the women she loved pass away. And it can be tiring, it can be taxing, to see everything change. But Calli was there. Each time she died, she would see her. Sometimes Calli ignored her, sometimes she listened to her and sometimes Calli was too busy to even look at her so she went on with her next incarnation, fully knowing that Calli would still be here the next time. As strange as it may be, the reaper, a symbol of death, was an anchor to her life.

But being her lover? It never even crossed her mind. If she proposed the whole Takamori thing to Calli, it was more as a thank you for everything Calli did for her. She sees easily that human life is not so easy for Calli, she is sure that the reaper still hasn’t understood the concept of a good night of sleep, and she hopes that this false relationship will help her acclimate to a normal life. Being alone in a country she isn’t even fully speaking the language must be so complicated that Kiara is offering as much help as she can, even creating a make-up couple with them.

And it helps that Calli is hot. She was hot in the Underworld, she found her even hotter in her human form. If there is one thing Kiara can’t deny, it’s that Calli is an absolute eye-catcher. She finds that all her colleagues are beautiful, and there are even two birds like her, she is so glad about that, but amongst them, Calli is by far the one she is looking at the most. Is it enough to say that she wants to date her, to have her scythe inside her? Kiara is not sure. And so, she is doing one of the strangest things she has ever done, she decides to push their two avatars as a couple as much as possible. Not just as a Twitter hashtag as she first intended but as something that is an important part of her character. Kiara created the Takamori thing to help Calli but if she can’t decide, she may also use it to help herself. Maybe recreating a situation where they are a couple would give her a better understanding of her own feelings.

So, Kiara talks about Takamori as much as possible, she retweets fan contents depicting them as a couple, she even tries to, with success, woo Calli in the Sims. Which, she admits to herself, is fun, and seems to amuse her fans, so even more reason to continue. She likes her current life, it may be one of her favorites, being part idol, part warrior, part VTuber, part soon to be fast-food owner. There is never a dull day. She makes some irreplaceable friends, plays both god awful games and some she really enjoyed, works her hardest, even released her own songs, and feels happy.

She is just not sure why Calli seems so indifferent. So she conceives the perfect plan to talk to Calli.

\--------------------------------------

“Let’s go on a trip, just the two of us!”

Some fans called it “their honeymoon” and how Calli wants it to be true. She gives her utmost in preparation, checking all the hotels, finding the best restaurants, booking everything and is very happy with their tentative trip. Kusotori couldn’t stop talking about it and she has messages after messages of the bird saying how impatient she is and how everything will be so fun and how she is so impatient to eat all the delicious food, “even if no food would taste as good as you <3”, she adds after one of her messages. Reading it was bad for her heart and Calli was glad she wasn’t streaming because she had changed into an absolute mess while reading this message and would not have been able to keep her poker face. She was so happy to read it and so sad that it’s just the usual game the not-really-chicken plays with her. 

Calli prepared for everything but there is one thing she doesn't feel confident enough to do and that’s interacting with the employees of the different reservations. It’s hard enough to talk in Japanese usually but having to understand and then speak sentences in keigo? Urgh, it was too much for her. Kiara agreed instantly to help her, and she will talk on behalf of Calli whenever there is any need.

Kiara is more than happy to help. She became so used to her interactions with Calli that she is now sad when a day passes by and she can’t chat with her. She feels like she is catching up on centuries of missed opportunities. She really liked talking to Calli every time she died but she feels like maybe she didn’t give enough importance to Calli and went with her new life maybe a bit too fast. Now that both are alive, she feels that for the first time, she is really listening to her. Not only because her rap is so so so so good, she listens to it on repeat, but mostly because they finally have real conversations. Now that she thinks about it, whenever they talked each time she died, she was talking and Calli was mostly listening. Sure, it was not easy to make Calli talk to her because the reaper is obviously not the most social person she has known, but Kiara kind of regrets that she didn’t make more effort.

So, when Kiara discussed the idea of going on a trip, just the two of them, she was so happy that Calli agreed and she gets to stay with Calli for almost a week, just by themselves. They never stayed together so long, that will be a first. And she also hopes that it will give her the last push she needs to really understand what she is feeling for Calli. She is more than a friend, that much is obvious, but she has been for a long time, and somewhere deep inside her, she feels that it’s not really the same “more than a friend” that it was all this time.

And thus, the first day of the trip begins. Kiara wholeheartedly trusts Calli for all the choices she made, partly because she wants to be surprised and partly because she wants to show to Calli how much she trusts her. They arrive in Sapporo, go to a nice restaurant, check-in at the hotel, explore the city and then come back to their hotel. Calli is going to their room first as Kiara has something to check at the reception desk.

“Excuse me Miss Mori, you requested a second bottle of Pinot Noir for your friend this afternoon but we are out of stock, we are very sorry, we instead brought to your room a bottle of Saint Emilion, free of charge as a compensation for your inconvenience, we are once again sorry for the trouble and we hope you will still enjoy your stay”. “Wait, I am not Miss Mor-” Kiara begins to say before remembering that she did the check-in and so the staff must think she is Calliope Mori. “Oh yes, it’s perfect, thanks a lot”. Kiara has absolutely no idea if it’s really okay, she doesn’t know the difference between those two wines, but she thinks Calli will be happy with a free bottle, no matter what it is. And more importantly, being called Miss Mori made her feel strange. It was a fuzzy feeling, like she could jump as far as the Moon, like all her body was warm, and not the way she can combust as a phoenix, but more like she was utterly happy, without the shadow of a doubt.

Kiara comes back to her shared room and finds Calli shining, with an incredible smile. “Look, the hotel gave us an even better bottle than what you asked for me, our trip is off to such a good start!” “Calli, I love you”. Kiara doesn’t even think about the words she just pronounced, it was simply the most natural thing she could have said at this moment, like her mind finally caught up on her feelings. But nothing could have prepared her for seeing Calli make such a strange expression, as if it is the one thing she always wanted to hear but at the same time the one thing she absolutely never wanted to hear. “I know, you already told me about the Takamori thing months ago, I agreed to it and our fans can’t see here right now, you don’t have to keep the act.” 

And then, it all clicked for Kiara. The reason Calli seemed so happy to see her lately every time she died, Calli's agreement of Takamori and the seemingly strange question she asked before accepting and why Calli seemed both happy and sad right now. Calli really loved her since such a long time, maybe even centuries, she never said a thing and the one time she tried to communicate her feelings, Kiara instantly rejected her. It’s no wonder she seemed indifferent whenever Kiara talked about Takamori on stream, it must have been hard for Calli, who has no experience in love, being in a fake relationship with someone you love but have already rejected you. “We are here as friends, we have been for centuries, we can continue…” 

Calli can’t finish her sentence as Kiara crosses the room as fast as she can and crushed her lips against Calli’s. It’s rough, it’s messy and they fumbled onto the bed. Calli totally freezes, like a deer surprised by a car lights, her mind seemingly unable to process what is happening.

“I love you Calli.” Kiara repeated, this time much more convinced that she was the first time, being sure of her feelings and looking the reaper directly in her eyes. “Not just as part of Takamori, but I, Takanashi Kiara, love Mori Calliope”. Calli was on the verge of crying, a mixture of joy and relief in her eyes, still trying to be sure that she heard and understood Kiara correctly. “Really?” she asks in a small voice, almost a whisper, afraid to look Kiara in the eyes and hoping that asking this question won’t break everything that happened in the last few minutes. “I promise you”, Kiara reassured her, cupping Calli’s cheek in the palm of her hand and brushing a few strands of hair. 

Calli is watching Kiara this time and sees the fire in her eyes. She feels warm, more than she has ever felt and more than she thought was possible, all her mind filled with only Kiara’s words. This time, Calli is closing the gap between them. Their second kiss is slower, more passionate and Calli is trying to communicate with it all those years of love she wasn’t able to voice before. When they finally break their kiss because Kiara needs to catch her breath, even though Calli would have liked to continue, the only thing they both see is the other looking tenderly at them. “Could we do it again?” Calli asked sheepishly. “Again and again and again.” Kiara answered. “We have centuries of love to catch up.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic and English isn't my native language so it may be a bit rough around the edges.  
> Nevertheless, a big thank you for reading this fic. I liked writing this fic and I hope you also liked reading it.  
> And don't hesitate to leave kudos or comment :)


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